Journal Article

Risk Terrain and Multilevel Modeling of Street Robbery Distribution in Baltimore City

Ejiogu, Kingsley U.

2023

Overview

The structure and functions of neighborhoods determine the impact of measures used to estimate the distribution of street robbery across space and time. The risk of street robbery could vary between different sections of the area. Prior research has typically relied on one-dimensional analysis, which sparsely accounts for the hierarchical configuration of a neighborhood’s influence on spatial crime distribution. Much less is known about how the predictor variables moderate each other at different neighborhood levels. Data was collected from 13,789 US Census blocks (N = 13,788) aggregated to administrative neighborhoods (N = 278) to examine how neighborhood structure affects street robbery distribution at two spatial levels. A Risk Terrain Model was adopted to develop a physical environment risk measure—Aggregate Neighborhood Risk of Crime (ANROC), which, alongside sociodemographic risk factors, predicted the outcomes of the Negative Binomial General Linear Regression models. Study findings suggest that individual-level (block) and group (neighborhood) level predictors influenced street robbery. Both group-level physical environment and total population moderated the impact of the individual-level physical environment on street robbery incidents. Plain Language Summary Explaining How the Risk of Street Robbery is Spread in Baltimore City How neighborhoods are structured and function influences the places and the times that street robberies occur. This means that the risk of street robbery will differ between neighborhoods, just as it will be different between different places within the same neighborhood. This research examined the effect of physical environment facilities (ANROC) and social forces, such as the proportion of single-female-headed homes, the population under 18 years, and the proportion of renters on street robbery. It examined the different levels of street robbery between 278 neighborhoods in the City of Baltimore, Maryland. The study also examined the differences in the levels of street robbery between the 13,789 places (blocks) within the neighborhoods. The study found that the forces determined by the places within and between the neighborhoods influenced the distribution of street robbery. Notably, the physical environment forces (ANROC) and the total population of the neighborhoods moderated how the physical environment influenced street robbery at places within the neighborhoods.

• Publisher: SAGE Publications,SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC,SAGE Publishing
• Subject: Built environment / Censuses / Cities / Crime / Dimensional analysis / Distribution / Environment / Individual differences / Neighborhoods / Physical Environment / Predictor Variables / Risk / Risk factors / Robbery / Social forces / Sociodemographics / Tenants